


Mundane Stimulation

by whiskeyandspite



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Awkwardness, Children, Cleverness, Established Relationship, Flirting, M/M, Parties, Teasing, social interaction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 19:32:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8502592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: Sherlock blinked, held his hands out on reflex when something was handed to him, and found himself suddenly in possession of an infant.

  “No, thank you,” he managed, to no one in particular - the mother had already slipped through the door. The child gurgled. Without a word, finding the response permission enough, Sherlock bent at the knees and deposited of the thing against one of the table legs on the floor.
Sherlock finds it ridiculously hot when John can do something he himself can't do.He's also overwhelmed by children.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SLSmith22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLSmith22/gifts).



> For the amazing, incredible, and utterly incorrigible (never change) Staci, who requested this bit of wondrous nonsense. And to Khara, for helping.

It started, of course, with an invitation that Sherlock had not wanted to accept. 

John had accepted it, on behalf of them both, and had neglected to mention so until the night of the damn thing. There had been a disagreement. There had been an exchange of several unpleasantries. There had been an eventual resolution; Sherlock had borrowed John’s vest and pocket watch, John had in return taken one of Sherlock’s scarves to wear.

They had arrived late.

It was a small function - even by Sherlock’s standards - at a pub several streets down from the Covent Garden markets. The back of the place had been booked out by whoever had organized this, with neatly set tables and a low bench upon which sat a series of glasses, pre-filled with wines, juice, or carbonated water. John took a wine. Sherlock took a breath but resisted saying anything about it.

It appeared that it was a celebration. Nothing as grand as a wedding announcement or a funeral, nothing as small as a generally good day. A spouse of one of the lesser officers at Scotland Yard had just graduated from her nursing course the weekend before, and had wanted to celebrate it by spending even more money on people who could care less about it.

“Sherlock.”

“What?”

“Could you at least pretend like this matters to you?”

Holmes drew his shoulders up, as a bird would ruffle its feathers unhappily, and narrowed his eyes.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” he said sulkily. “Everyone knows this doesn’t matter to me. Why would a completion of a nursing course matter to me? I have completed enough of them to know they’re absolute rubbish in London, practicum or no, and I know that she will hardly find her happiness in emptying bedpans and smiling at rude men grumbling about their understandably revolting dinner.”

“Good to know you think so little of my own profession,” John muttered, taking a deliberate sip of his wine. But Sherlock wasn’t finished.

“I never accept invitations of this sort, everyone knows it, and had you not, on my behalf, John, we wouldn’t be here now. Or I wouldn’t be, which would suit me just fine.”

John finished his wine and set the empty glass down, immediately replacing it with a full one. Sherlock narrowed his eyes further, but again refrained from commenting. John was fairly certain that had he, both of them would have been escorted from the premises. For several moments he let Sherlock seethe in his patented displeasure, before making his way over to the hostess to congratulate her on her achievement.

Sherlock didn’t join him.

Sherlock didn’t do anything, really, beyond shoving his hands deeper into the pockets of his coat and burying his cheeks deeper between his shoulders. He could rant for hours, it seemed, about just how little he wanted human interaction, and it would always fall on deaf ears. John would always find a way to bring him along. John would always find a way for him to come, and agree, and actually do something, when no one else could.

It was infuriating.

The anger gave Sherlock comfort enough to ease the tension from his back.

“Excuse me,” a woman. Young woman, early twenties, blonde hair, lines beneath her eyes suggesting exhaustion and far too much laughter in equal measure, lips painted a shade too light to look good with her skin tone, foundation not properly blended at her jaw - “D’you mind? I’m dying for a smoke and don’t want to interrupt anyone’s conversation. I’ll just be a minute,”

Sherlock blinked, held his hands out on reflex when something was handed to him, and found himself suddenly in possession of an infant.

The thing blinked, eyes far too wide and almost unrealistically blue, and Sherlock pushed a breath through his nose.

“No, thank you,” he managed, to no one in particular - the mother had already slipped through the door. The child gurgled. Without a word, finding the response permission enough, Sherlock bent at the knees and deposited of the thing against one of the table legs on the floor.

“Sherlock!”

“What?” His own tone had started to pitch higher than he appreciated it being, mirroring John’s. He stepped back, giving John room to bend and gather the baby to him from the floor.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Leaving it in a safe place for the mother to find when she returns. She said she wouldn’t be long.”

“You can’t leave an infant on the floor of a goddamn _pub_ , Sherlock! You can’t leave an infant on the floor at all!”

The named party offered a sniffle in response and reached back for Sherlock again, seeking to grasp against the soft wool of his vest. The detective’s lips twisted. The doctor merely handed him the bundle again, not giving Sherlock any option but to fold his hands around it if he didn’t want it to drop. He held the thing under its arms, letting the tiny legs curl and dangle, feet turning and toes wiggling in its tiny socks.

“Well she shouldn’t have entrusted me with it. I don’t want it.”

“You needn’t do anything but hold it until she comes back,” John replied, exasperated. “You’re hardly adopting it to take home.”

“I would never. Children are notoriously filthy things. Always touching and tugging things they’re not supposed to. It would make an extraordinary mess of my laboratory in the kitchen. It would get sticky fingerprints all over the glasses and plates. It would smear its leavings everywhere.”

“It’s leav- Sherlock, it’s a baby, not an animal.”

“All the more reason to be wary of it. Puppies can be trained, John, it’s in their nature. All humans, on the other hand, are inordinately stupid, every single one of them. It’s perplexing how many manage to grow up at all, considering they - John.” The baby had screwed its face up, holding its breath and darkening its cheeks to purple in the process. It looked like it was about to be ill. That would have already been bad enough, but instead it opened its mouth and released a bright yelp of a sound.

“John.”

That was worse.

“ _John_.”

Much worse.

“Look, now you’ve gone and upset her.” John muttered, frowning as he stepped near. “Well done.”

“Me? How could I have upset it, it doesn’t even have a grasp of linguistic processes yet, it can’t understand me. I should be the one wailing, right now, being put in this situation.” In answer, the infant wailed louder, like a siren. “Lestrade should put it on top of his vehicle in an emergency. It would clear a path through all of London.”

“Goddammit, Sherlock, rock her!”

“What?”

It was very close to becoming a scene. A scene at a gathering Sherlock had not even wanted to attend, even dressed dapper as he was in John’s clothes. It was close to getting out of hand in front of people they both knew, in front of strangers they would never see again, in a place Sherlock might find himself often, since Covent Garden was a regular haunt for other sorts of business.

The last thing he needed was a goddamn scene.

“Oh for God’s sake,” John stepped near enough that Sherlock nearly flinched away from an oncoming embrace, but the doctor merely took back the child and cradled it against his chest, one arm beneath its rounded little rump, the other flat against its back. The thing hiccuped on another cry and beat its tiny fists several times against John’s shoulder before settling.

The sounds eased, as John bounced the baby on his arm and soothed her with murmured words.

Sherlock couldn’t take his eyes off of the display, if he were honest. He had seen John stitch up a man, he had experienced John stitching up _him_ , several times, he had faced down guns and corporations, idiots and dangers, and yet this, this tiny insufferable little thing, had stumped him completely.

And now, in John’s arms, it was quieting down as though it hadn’t screamed at all.

John was absolutely bloody extraordinary.

“I cannot fathom,” John murmured, the tone unchanged from the one that had comforted the baby, but the words were aimed at his detective now. “I cannot, no matter how hard I try, how it is that you can be so bloody clever and yet so completely clueless, Sherlock.”

John turned slowly, back and forth, from the hips, holding the little bundle near. Once more, the sounds coming from it were calm coos and gurgles, not the panicked shrieks from before. Sherlock said nothing, eyes glued to the man who was keeping this child so calm.

“It’s a child, Sherlock, a human child. Not an animal, not an atomic bloody bomb. You were a child, once. You were just as small, just as helpless, and just as stupid as you claim she is, now. I guarantee you that Mycroft saw you just the same way, because he was a child once too. Everyone was. Yet you approach it as though it’s a creature no one has catalogued or discovered yet, as though it’s something dangerous and filthy rather than a completely natural, perfectly normal, entirely well-formed human infant.”

It was as though nothing existed around them, now, as though no one existed, but this child and John holding it. All the sounds that so often penetrated Sherlock’s waking mind against his will were silenced to a hum, all the details that so often overwhelmed his senses were unimportant and irrelevant. Instead, Sherlock watched John gently ease the baby from himself and look at her, smiling so earnestly that the corners of his eyes bunched up. He watched the way the little person - and John was right, it was a person, in its own way - smiled back immediately, gummy grin bright.

No words. No magic. No hypnosis or strange and learned techniques. Just a smile, and the infant was calm and contented once more, happily leaning against John when he settled her near again.

“Sherlock.”

He could feel his pulse in his fingertips, in his temples. He could feel it in his lips from which a breath escaped with a small sound alongside.

“Sherlock.”

“Yes?”

He was staring. He knew he was staring because John’s brows were doing that strange thing where they pressed together but didn’t make him appear angry or concerned. Confused perhaps. No. Curious?

“You’re staring.”

“You made it stop crying.”

“Her. I made her stop crying. I told you to rock her,” John replied, stepping near again to hand the baby back over, adjusting Sherlock’s arms to hold her properly, this time. She didn’t make a sound beyond a fussy little sigh, and settled against the detective without incident. “They don’t need much, babies. Just reassurance and warmth, really.”

Sherlock said nothing. He held the baby and said nothing. He held the baby and watched John watch him, and allowed himself to ease the wall that usually kept his emotions back so thoroughly. John’s brows did the thing again, his lips slackened slightly, he blinked.

“Oh, ta,” the woman was back. Still blonde, still slim, still exhausted with laugh lines and unblended foundation. “I really needed that. Thanks so much.”

Sherlock relinquished the child without a word, with little more than a tensing of his lips to suggest a brief smile, with little more than a shrug before his hands found their way into his pockets again. He didn’t watch the woman walk away with her baby, he couldn’t care less. He didn’t want to return to the gathering, though it was clear that dinner would soon be served and he should find a seat.

He watched John.

John tilted his head and watched him back.

“Sherlock.”

“John.”

“You’re blushing.”

“Am I?”

He certainly was, now, if he hadn’t been before. The sensation was extraordinarily involuntary. Sherlock ducked his head to rub his skin against the shoulder of his coat as though that would help ease the heat in his face. John watched that motion, too, before seeking to catch Sherlock’s eyes again.

“Was the child really so overwhelming? She didn’t attempt inept conversation with you, she didn’t call you out on your faults.” John’s lips quirked a moment. “She’s probably the best company you’ve had all evening.”

“Now, that’s hardly true.” Sherlock scoffed, frowning as he turned his face away from John again, a deliberate flick of his head attempted to push a curl of hair out of his eyes, unsuccessfully. “I got to witness the great John Watson calm a screaming beast. A skill I didn’t know you were in possession of. It’s rare that I can be surprised.”

John’s shoulders straightened, his chest expanding in pride. It was a tiny action, barely a second of change before John cleared his throat and shrugged the praise away.

“Babies are easier to calm than grumpy men in their hospital beds.”

“I doubt that’s true.”

“You know it’s true, Sherlock, you’re just incapable of doing either. And that upsets your precariously balanced pride.”

The detective held his breath a moment, just a bare sliver of white beneath his lip suggesting he had opened his mouth to speak and thought better of it.

“It… doesn’t.” He managed at last, a crisp end to every word, consonants articulated and vowels rounded. His eyes sought just to the left of John’s, then just beneath, then just above. Everywhere but on them.

He refused to meet them even as John stepped closer again and tried to catch his gaze.

“Then what?”

“What, what?”

“What does it make you feel?” John pressed. “What does seeing me do something you have no capability of doing make you feel?”

Sherlock swallowed, brought the inside of his lip between his teeth to gently bite against. John didn’t step back. The sounds around them didn’t ease, so there wasn’t even that excuse for Sherlock to use to move away.

“Stimulated,” he finally answered. “Mentally, of course. It’s a curious thing to see someone best me in something so mundane as childrearing.”

John blinked once. He hummed, a low and short note, and waited for Sherlock to finally turn his gaze to him again. He would, inevitably. He did, inevitably. Incredible and clever as the detective was, he was - despite his own claims - humanly predictable.

“I suppose I’ll have to find more mundane ways with which to stimulate you, then,” he replied. “Mentally, of course.”

Before Sherlock could answer, someone called for the guests to be seated for dinner. Through the general hubbub of noise, and human meandering, both the doctor and detective found themselves a seat towards the end of the table, by the low dividing wall between their allocated space and the rest of the pub.

Here, John could keep talking for the both of them, occasionally nudging Sherlock with his shoulder to have him participate. Here, John could take control again, as he did so easily in social situations. And all Sherlock had to do was ease his thighs apart, push his knee against John’s, and accept the warm palm that set to his leg in victory.


End file.
